Feminism in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

    The narrator finds herself economically and emotionally dependent on her husband, John.  Many times she questions to herself why she stays in the room all of the time.  She then answers herself by saying, " John says it is good for me" (Gilman, 665).  She thinks of her husband as much wiser and more important than she, which is the way that society treated males during the time period the story was written.  During this era, women were discouraged from joining the work force and were thought to be better suited as a mother, and wife rather than an employee.   This is the common stereotype that women tried to overcome during the women's movement.

The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is told she needs to rest constantly to overcome her sickness, so she is forced to stay in the old nursery where there is yellow-orange wallpaper with a busy, obnoxious pattern that she hates. She tries to study the wallpaper to distinguish the pattern, and as time goes on she believes she sees a woman moving around in the background of the pattern. Also, during this period of time the character’s condition is worsening, because her husband is causing her mind to weaken by not allowing her to exert herself at all; he says she is not to think about her condition, walk through the garden or visit family. All she can do is sleep and trace the wallpaper, and being cooped up in the room causes her to begin hallucinating. The narrator sees the woman trying to escape from the wallpaper throughout the night, and she ultimately completely breaks down and believes that she is the woman.

It is also notable that the protagonist’s room is located at the top of the mansion and was formerly a nursery. At the top of the mansion, she is far away from everyone and everything and can only look out from her barred window. This is similar to the tale of Rapunzel, a girl trapped in a tower with no one to communicate with. The narrator’s room being a former nursery and playroom may also give insight to John’s attitude towards her, in that he sees her as a child that needs to be pacified and doted on rather than a grown woman that can make her own choices about her illness and its treatment. The yellow wallpaper that decorates the room is what catches the narrator’s eye, as she finds it unbearably

The husband, John, in the "Yellow Wallpaper" doesn't see the seriousness of his wife's deterioration because following along with the beliefs of that time, he thinks its impossible that a woman could have a mental illness. With so little to do and virtually no stimulation, the narrator's mood varies. She realizes that she's starting to see shapes in the yellow wallpaper. She becomes completely obsessed with the wallpaper, and even believes that her husband is trying to see the shapes before she can. Finally, she succumbs completely to her

While the narrator recognizes the great care with which her husband is treating her she seems to constantly feel that she is being ungrateful. She calls herself out in her journal for being a “comparative burden” (Gilman) The room in which the narrator resides has a sturdy bed that is nailed to the floor. The narrator notes that there are bars on the windows and rings hooked into the wall. She wrongly assumes that this room was used as a nursery or gymnasium by the previous owners. As the reader, we are able to instill our own thoughts that this room was in fact built to house someone with a mental disorder. This begs the question of what the house really is, to contain such a room away from decent society.

     The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a fictionalized autobiographical account that illustrates the emotional and intellectual deterioration of the female narrator who is also a wife and mother. The woman, who seemingly is suffering from post-partum depression, searches for some sort of peace in her male dominated world. She is given a “rest cure” from her husband/neurologist doctor that requires strict bed rest and an imposed reprieve form any mental stimulation. As a result of her husband’s controlling edicts, the woman develops an obsessive attachment to the intricate details of the wallpaper on her bedroom wall. The woman’s increasingly intense obsession with

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is about a creative woman whose talents are suppressed by her dominant husband. His efforts to oppress her in order to keep her within society's norms of what a wife is supposed to act like, only lead to her mental destruction. He is more concerned with societal norms than the mental health of his wife. In trying to become independent and overcome her own suppressed thoughts, and her husbands false diagnosis of her; she loses her sanity. One way the story illustrates his dominance is by the way he, a well-know and

The nursery is described much like a prison with bars on the windows and the bed is also nailed to the ground and impossible to move. The narrator spends most of her time in this room because she is usually in bed and this is a big cause for her breakdown due to the ugly wall paper. She hates the wall paper; it infuriates her. The paper is a weird yellow color and has a very ugly pattern. The wallpaper later symbolizes her oppression and is eventually torn down representing her breaking through and fighting it

Restriction causes pain, but freedom brings relief. Similarly, in the short story The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator is suffering from what her husband interprets to be temporary nervous depression. Although her husband John is a doctor, his methods to aid her prove to be insufficient and harmful. It is clear that he loves his wife and wants her health to improve but, his controlling ways are of no help. He believes that he knows best since he is the “doctor”, which only heightens his know it all character. Gender stratification is evident throughout the story, as one can see the power John has not because he is a doctor; because of his sex. John and the narrator’s relatives drive her to act in a manner out of the ordinary. John not only plays a major role in her life, but her well-being. The narrator’s problems are not only mental but social because her husband takes advantage of her being ill, her family is insensitive to her desires, as well as her husband’s ego blinds him from the real issue.

     In the late nineteenth century, after the American social and economic shift commonly referred to as the "Industrial Revolution" had changed the very fabric of American society, increased attention was paid to the psychological disorders that apparently had steamed up out of the new smokestacks and skyscrapers in urban populations (Bauer, 131).  These disorders were presumed to have been born out of the exhaustion and "wear and tear" of industrial society (Bauer, 131-132).  An obvious effect of these new disorders was a slew of physicians and psychiatrists advocating one sort of cure or another, although the "rest cure" popularized by the physician S. Weir Mitchell was the most

The narrator describes the entire mansion from the hedges to the gates, to the garden as “the most beautiful place ever”. All of it is beautiful except for the bedroom in which she is kept in, but again the room selection was not her choice. “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it.” The room had previously been a child’s nursery, and had bars on the window. Though she recently had a child, her newborn did not occupy this nursery. The baby was looked after by Johns’ sister, something he had also arranged, and the narrator had very little contact with her child. As the story progresses, the narrator begins to fill more and more trapped by the room and completely obsessed with the “repellent, almost revolting” yellow wallpaper that surrounds her. In many of her secret

The short story was a very strong testimonial that had people wondering about women’s right in the 20th century and how hard it was for women to stand for themselves or to have a say in things. In Gilman’s story, it shows a strong feeling about feminism and women not having a right to stand up for themselves. Judith A. Allen claims in her article that, “Gilman has once again become an important source of inspiration and ideas, in particular for more of her fictional work has been made available. Her short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ has become a feminist classic and remains the subject of much discussion.” As more people being to read the story they had more understanding of what a woman with mental illness is going through in the 20th century.

During that time, it was considered improper for a woman to express her feelings like anger or dislike. She says, "I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes" (pg278), and the narrator blamed it on her mental condition rather than saying that she was actually tired of her husband's way of treating her illness. She felt secluded, useless and trapped. Yet, she still had to follow and accept that kind of social rule. Women were expected to be good in doing the house chores and taking care children. In the story, the narrator mentions about John's sister who was a perfect housekeeper and hoped for no better profession. There is also Mary who was so good with the Baby. The author was actually trying to send images to the readers that it was expected attitudes in her society and was part of their culture which women were forced to follow.

Trapped in the upstairs of an old mansion with barred windows and disturbing yellow colored wallpaper, the main character is ordered by her husband, a physician, to stay in bed and isolate her mind from any outside wandering thoughts. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, describes the digression of the narrator’s mental state as she suffers from a form of depression. As the story progresses, the hatred she gains for the wallpaper amplifies and her thoughts begin to alter her perception of the room around her. The wallpaper serves as a symbol that mimics the narrator’s trapped and suffering mental state while she slips away from sanity reinforcing the argument that something as simple as wallpaper can completely

In the tradition, then men were held and accepted as the patriarchs, bread-winners, the father, the men of the house and the protectors. And across the world, women were taken to be mothers and their work was only in the household, cooking, washing, giving birth and bringing up their children. The feminists in those eras mentioned that there was need to create awareness and let the society understand the position that women should be placed in the world. The tradition made a women look like a vessel and a carrier to the man; as a womb (de Beauvoir 1949).